詩心と崇高な人物

Abstract

Those who have the poetic minds, can "have an under-sense of greatest among least things, and see the parts as parts, but with a feeling of the whole." Those minds are not restricted to poets. Wordsworth's sublime figures have them. The types of those figures are Michael and a Leech-gatherer. Michael has two aspects. The first one is that he is outwardly sublime, and the second is that he is a mortal being. He meets with a misfortune, but he is not overwhelmed by it. It is made possible by his poetic mind that he keeps working in spite of his unhappiness. And we can find him sublime. The Leech-gatherer has only the same aspect as Michael's second aspect. He is not outwardly sublime, but he is sublime because we can feel immortality through his mortality like Wordsworth. Wordsworth's consciousness of his own mortality makes him appreciate the Leech-gatherer's sublimity. The poetic mind is most active, when he who has the poetic mind, appreciates his own mortality. It can be seen in King Lear, too. The poetic mind has the deep relation with mortality, and sublimity appears most conspicuous, when the poetic mind transforms mortality into immortality with a sublime consciousness of the soul's immortality.